Run for the Hills!

Nothing like a tornado touching down a half-mile from your house... Especially on a holiday.

How to manually add a domain name to Panicware's Pop-Up Stopper Free edition.

I needed to do this because when using the Google Toolbar 2.0's Blogger button the window would pop up and disappear. Turning off Pop-Up Stopper and trying to add the domain name doesn't work because the pop-up window has no menus or toolbars.

Here are the steps:

1. Start regedit


2. Export the key
   [HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Panicware\Pop-Up Stopper Free\PopUpDomains]


3. Open the exported file with a simple text editor and find the highest number "DomainX".


4. Copy the line that includes "DomainX" and the next 15 lines.


5. Paste this directly below the section you just highlighted/copied.


6. Increment the "DomainX" by 1


7. Now you must convert to pieces of information from ASCII to Hex. You need to convert the name or title of the site you are adding as well as the domain name without "HTTP://". Visit http://209.15.122.1/sookietex/ASCII2HEX.html for conversion.


8. Just after "hex:" on the first line you need to replace these hex values with a hex values of the name or title. It must be pairs of letters separated by commas. Everything should line up like all of the other entries. You may have to utilize the second line for the title to fit.


9. On the sixth line beginning in the 8th pair of letters is where you replace everything with the converted domain name.


10. Save this file.


11. Using Windows Explorer, navigate to the location of the file and click it. You will be warned about importing registry information. Click OK to continue.


12. Now the new entry should be allowed to create a pop-up window.

Peter Gabriel

I saw the Peter Gabriel at the Womad Festival in September 1993 held at the Deer Creek Music Center in Indianapolis. It was a fantastic show even know wasn't a full concert because of the other performers. I left that show determined to see a full concert sometime in the future.

Well, the future is now! A friend from Colorado, Mark Nelson, was home visiting over the Fourth of July holiday and we went, once again to The Deer Creek Music Center, to the "Up" tour concert on July 2nd, 2003.

The opening act was Sevara Nazarkhan from Uzbekistan. Never hearing of them I guess I went into the show with a negative attitude, but they were really quite good. A very eclectic mix of world music type sounds driven by straightforward rock drums and bass. Their music is similar to Peter Gabriel. I can see why he chose them for the opening act. It was a great show, but the female backing vocals weren't quite strong enough. However, the fact that she was his daughter Melanie made up for it. It was interesting to watch them interact during the show as father and daughter. Too bad Paula Cole wasn't touring with the show!

Here are some of the highlights:

Secret World - (One of my favorite live Gabriel songs. It rocked!)
Games Without Frontiers - (Peter and Melanie used a Segway to race around the stage)
Digging in the Dirt - (He used a small camera attached to a headpiece that showed his eyes, nose, mouth on the big circular screen.)
The Tower That Ate People - (One of the better performances of the night. It also rocked! This song can be found on the soundtrack to Red Planet)
Growing Up - (He sang this from inside a giant hamster/gerbil ball. However, he stopped the performance about a fourth of the way through got out of the ball and talked about "Have you ever had a flat tire on your car? Well, that's what it just happened to the ball. We have a flat and tonight I really want to bounce!" So, while he talked a patched and pumped up the ball and they started over.)
Solsbury Hill - (This really gotten crowded going especially when they made their way around the pavilion while performing!)
Sledgehammer - (The song started out pretty quiet, but you could tell David Rhodes was ready to rock the way he was trying to quietly play the beginning just different enough that nobody else but the hard-core fans would recognize. About the time the keyboards started Peter came on to the stage wearing a black suit with white lights just like the video)

First encore:

In Your Eyes - (Sevara and another member of her band joined him on this song. There was a small problem during the song because about the time Sevara started to sing the "Indian" background vocals her microphone was turned off. It only took a couple of seconds for the engineer to turn it on)

Second Encore

Come Talk to Me - (They used one of the old English telephone booths like in Secret World Live concert video)
Father, Son - (This was a nice touch, but not your typical show closing song. It was a tribute to his aging father who is believed 91.)

Peter did make a short speech. He said his country used to be able to go anywhere in the world and do anything. He implied that now America is the only superpower and if we want "Freedom and national security, you will need to learn to respect other people's rights." I can do without the politics mixed in with my rock show!

What a bummer! I just found out one of the best Screen Savers, Megan Morrone, won't be back on the show. If you are interested checkout Jumping Monkeys: Back, but not to The Screen Savers.

This is the first post of my new blog. I found this thanks to one of the best TV shows, The Screen Savers, on Tech TV. Check it out!